Tag Archives: Biking

Dancing on the Pedals

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First Egret of the Year

First Egret of the Year

Anne and I went dancing today, dancing on our pedals that is, in a most immodest way, but the day didn’t begin with us both prancing with such vigor. Rather, the day started out on the slow side of life. It began with us starring as extras on the waking dead, a role which we parlayed into parts on the walking dead and then we got our own spinoff, the biking dead. We were both sore and tired from previous weekend cycling efforts. We persisted though, took it easy and by the end of the afternoon felt pretty good about ourselves, rejuvenated.

We mainly kept to Forest Park. It was crowded, but not as oppressively so as it was yesterday. Apparently, Saint Louisans can only stand a couple of days of great weather, before they get bored with the whole fresh air and exercise thing. We combined biking with birding, complementary pastimes. Biking gets you from one good birding spot to another quickly and easily and birding gives you plenty of time to rest in between rides. In addition to the Great White Egret pictured here, we also saw a brown thrasher, a yellow shafted flicker and some song sparrows and numerous other birds of low repute, like Canada geese, robins, mallards and grackles. We left the park for lunch at Duff’s in the Central West End, patio dining again. Bikers love patio dining, because all that fresh air helps to dilute the smell of sweaty cyclists.

Signs of Spring

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Yulan (Magnolia denudata)
Red Eared Sliders and a Male Mallard
Harry Lauder’s walking stick
Male Wood Duck
Golden-crowned Kinglet


I bicycled all day today. I didn’t end up with all that many miles for such an all day effort, but at least I was out and about. I rode around Forest Park by myself, once in the morning. This is the weekend of the Saint Louis marathon, which actually isn’t until tomorrow, but today they held a 5K run in the park. The place was mobbed with all the people who will not be doing the full marathon or even the half marathon tomorrow.

I returned home and rousted Anne out of the house. We launched towards the park again, by this time the 5K crowd had dissipated, only to be replaced by the usual weekend mob, their numbers swelled by today’s beautiful springtime weather. We passed through the park and headed towards Tower Grove Park. They’ve dropped a couple of bridges over Forty, so we tried a different route than usual. This took us through parts of the Forest Park Southeast neighborhood that we don’t usually pass through. There is a lot of construction going on in this area, revitalizing the neighborhood.

We did a turn through half of Tower Grove, and then decided to bail to Morganford, Local Harvest and lunch. We ate on the patio, which is now enclosed, so we were quite comfortable. After lunch, we completed our circuit of Tower Grove Park. Kickball season was in full swing. We passed a couple of guys who were practicing their knife fighting skills in the middle of the road. I think that they were only practicing and not really fighting, because there was an instructional aspect to their conversation. After we passed them, Anne advised me to never bring a bicycle to a knife fight.

On our way back from Tower Grove, we stopped off at the Botanical Gardens. All of the pictures with this post were taken in the garden. It was crowded there too. There were an awful lot of weddings being held there today. Brides were popping out from behind every tree. On the way home from there, we enjoyed the tailwind when we had it and endured the headwind when we had to.

Two Thumbs Up!

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Team Kaldi's

Team Kaldi’s

It was a gorgeous day in Saint Louis, with crystal blue skies and a balmy high in the seventy’s. I ended up playing hooky from work. I took the afternoon off and bicycled in the park. I saw Mary A. who was also cycling. We’ll attend her Team Kaldi’s party later tonight. It is not an official team event. I think with a team population now at well over a hundred riders, Team Kaldi’s has grown too big for even Bill and Mary’s large house. Looking at the invitee list, I was reminded of the above photo that has been hanging in the basement for many years now. It was taken during the fall, after the very first Team Kaldi’s MS-150 bicycle ride. It is a little worse for wear, but then aren’t we all?

Since I was bicycling alone today, I listened to the radio and various podcasts. One show that I caught part of was today’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross. Her show today was a retrospective on Roger Ebert, the Chicago based film critic who died yesterday. She had interviewed him several times over the many years of her show. I was most struck by two stories that Ebert told. The setup for the first story was a question that Gross asked Ebert, whether he had found actors to become petulant if during an interview a less than flattering question was ever asked. Ebert explained that this phenomenon is the result of the advent of the publicist. A person whose goal it is to script every press interaction.

As counterpoint to the modern publicist, Ebert told the story of his interview with the actor, Lee Marvin. Marvin was very drunk that day. His publicist was there too, but he was preoccupied with buying more beer. Marvin’s girlfriend was there too. Marvin’s dog came out of the bedroom with a pair of ladies panties draped across its head. The girlfriend asked, “What’s that?” Marvin answered, “Your panties.” She said, “Those aren’t my panties.” To which Marvin replied, “Bad dog!”

Ebert’s other story had to do with fame and the effects that it has on one’s life. He explained that once you obtain fame, you have to be nice to everyone, the people on the elevator, the waitress, people on the street. You don’t know who they are, but they know who you are and they will tell everyone what you did.

His second story involved Michael Caine. It occurred in the sixties, when Caine was still a young man. Caine was on his first trip to America. He had heard tales of the dirty book stores in the US. The ones in Britain were rather tame by comparison. He had just obtained fame, with Alfie, so he didn’t want to be seen in such a store. Walking by the window of such a store in Times Square, he noticed that none of the store’s patrons ever made eye contact with each other. Caine realized that he could in fact walk-in to such a store unobserved. He didn’t account for the store’s proprietor, who sat up high to see all and with a microphone usually just chided his customers, “This is a store, not a reading library.” This day the loudspeaker also blared, “And we have the famous British actor, Michael Caine, in the rubber-wear room.”

frizzflopsqueezepop

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Thing Three (neon fever)
another tasteless hunk
Beauwoahzeau [one]
Beauwoahzeau [two]
RUD and Anne


The show frizzflopsqueezepop by Claire Ashley was at the Chicago Cultural Center, when we saw it last month. This show closed last week. The inflatables that she has created are abstract canvases filled with hot air. These brightly colored plastic toys are created in a loud and carefree spray-painting style adapted from that of the street graffiti artist. Produced from large scraps of PVC coated canvas hand-sewn together, painted, and then inflated via an embedded air-blower into the rotund bulbous forms seen here. Recent incorporation of these inflatables into parades and performance art works, often feature the performers embedded within the inflatable itself.

Tuesday was Election Day and Anne worked the polls as an election official. Being an election official is a fifteen hour work day. She gets up at four and leaves the house before five. The polls are open from six AM to seven PM. Anne usually returns home after eight at night. It is a long exhausting day. Yesterday things didn’t go according to plan.

Anne’s duck began quacking at four. The quacking ducks are her favorite iPhone alarm. They didn’t wake her up, but they did me. I then woke her up. She got up, but I had problems falling back to sleep. Eventually though I did fall asleep again, only to be awoken again when Anne announced, “My car won’t start. I’m taking yours.” Before I could react or even wake up she was gone.

I got up, waited for dawn and then bicycled over to her poll in Maplewood. I threw my bike into the back of the Prius and drove it back home. I checked Anne’s car and noticed that one of the doors had been left ajar, since last Thursday. I got ready and then drove to work, where nine out of nine of the guys there agreed that that I had been wronged. After work, after I had voted and after I had gotten her car started, I called Anne. She had already arranged for a ride home, so I didn’t need to complete my morning dance again, in reverse.

There was only one issue of note on our ballot, Proposition P, the so-called Arch tax. It passed, but calling it the Arch tax is somewhat a misnomer. Only 30% of the monies raised with this sales tax will go to the Arch. They plan to reconnect the Arch with the rest of downtown Saint Louis. Currently, I-70 acts as a moat separating the Arch from Saint Louis. 40% of the money will go to maintain Saint Louis city and county parks. The remaining 30% will be given to a non-profit Confluence Greenway for the development of bicycle trails in Saint Louis.

I was miffed by Anne’s cavalier behavior, but I shouldn’t have been. It got me out on the bike in the early AM and I haven’t ridden at that hour for some time. It was a cold, crisp, beautiful, early spring morning. I’ll have to do it again soon, only this time of my own free will.

Easter Car Show

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1937 Custom Buick Coupe
Hood Ornament of a 1947 Plymouth P15
1938 Custom Chevy
Front Grill of a 1936 REO Flying Cloud
Cherry Custom Interior


Anne got up to use the bathroom and when she came back to bed, I asked her what time was it? She answered, “Dawn, dawn of the dead, ROAR!” Then she tried to eat my brains. Happy Easter to you too, honey. I don’t think that she was making any religious statement, no zombie Jesus crack anyway. I think her commentary had more to do with the state of lethargy that pervaded the household at that early morning hour.

Later, I went to Starbucks because we were out of coffee, I had forgotten to get some yesterday and today all of the grocery stores are closed for the Easter holiday. The unionized grocery stores are about the only keepers of this last vestige of the blue laws that once ruled Saint Louis. When we first moved to Saint Louis, over thirty years ago, almost everything was closed on Sunday. Now, except for Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and Easter Sunday, few stores are closed on Sunday. The few holdouts are mom and pop stores that as likely as not, just don’t want to work on Sunday.

I had to park and walk a couple of blocks to get to Starbucks. As I was walking along and passing the unusually long line of parked cars, I spied one with the following bumper sticker, “Jesus didn’t ride an Elephant”. I had to Google it, to decipher its meaning. Apparently, it is political. An elephant is the symbol for the Republican Party, while the donkey is the Democratic Party’s symbol. The Bible tells us that on Palm Sunday, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. Hence, Jesus didn’t ride an elephant. Read into it what you will.

The Post-Dispatch this morning featured a retrospective of Easter in Saint Louis. The most striking photo in the article was a 1948 picture of the sunrise service at the Muny. The amphitheater was full to the gills; all of its 11,000 seats were filled. They don’t do sunrise services at the Muny anymore, but they to offer dueling car shows on both the upper and lower Muny parking lots. We bicycled over there at the butt-crack on noon, a wee bit after sunrise.

On our way over to Forest Park, we cruised through a neighborhood that was inhabited by a giant six-foot rabbit, about Harvey sized. Chasing after this rodent of unusual size were three little kids, some armed with bow and arrows and one shouting, “Shoot him!” I hope that he wasn’t the real Easter Bunny.

We circled around the park and made our way to the upper Muny lot, by the least congested route. The upper lot is dedicated to classic cars and the lower lot hosts custom cars. What with our late and rather wet Spring the vehicle turnout was a little lower than in past years, but the day’s warm temperatures and bright skies made for an enjoyable afternoon. I got sunburned.

In addition to all of the interesting cars there were also some interesting people in the crowd. One young man wore a T-shirt with a picture of a T-Rex on it. The picture was captioned, “Licensed to carry small arms”. Anne overheard this conversation, “I can’t see him anywhere. There are too many old people here.” This man said this with a smile, but he was both older and grayer than us.